virtue. clinton versus starr, and before we get into the book, let me find out about yourself, where did you grow up. >> i grew up in pittsburgh, greg and went to the university of pittsburgh and somehow went astray and went to harvard law school, so, after i got out of law school, went home and i teach currently, i'm the interim dean at duquesne university school of law in pittsburgh. >> what kind of law do you teach. >> constitutional law. primarily. i have been teaching pretty much for 20 years. i did practice law, too, but, during all of that time i kept writing. i have done writing throughout my career. i find that it keeps me kind of energized and, so, these book projects, they take a little bit of time, they are different than writing for newspapers and magazines and things like that but i enjoy it a lot. >> have you done that as well, writing for newspapers and magazines. >> yes. i have done that throughout my career. easterly on i would do features stories for newspapers, in

pittsburgh and, kind of character studies and i found it helped a lot in tackling these big books of nonfiction because you learn dialogue and learn to study people and so it was helpful. >> this is not your first big book. i say this is a big book, but not your first one. you wrote a biography of archibald cox, did you not. >> yes. he was of course the principled and famous watergate special prosecutor who was fired rather than back down from president nixon and that led to the unravel, as you know of the nixon presidency. he was my law professor in harvard and i wrote that book fairly early on out of law school. it was another big project and took 7 years, and it was a lot of fun, that i have to say was easier in a since of one life, you kind of know where you are going from start to finish and this once had so many movable parts, this was scary at first, because it was just such a big

project. >> well, that raises the question about why you did it. obviously, this was a topic that was front and center, in the newspapers and on television, for man, many months, if not years. you wanted to go back to it and revisit all of those exciting days? >> well, i never stopped revisiting it in many ways. my book on archibald cox came out right at the monica lewinsky scandal was blowing up in the national media and so i became one of the many talking heads on that subject, at the time. and i was viewed as an expert on special prosecutors because i'd done a lot of writing on that i followed this thing and wrote op-eds for newspapers all over the country, attended the first day of the impeachment trial in the senate and it was almost as if i was destined to do this, greg and i began work on this in january of 2000. and it startled me, i thought my

littlest daughter madeleine was born two months after that and she's about to turn ten and this has been' long project. >> it is interesting. a lot of people who covered it on a regular basis wrote books. >> peter baker and... >> a couple of others but you were not covering it at the time. you were watching it and talking about it but you were not writing a regular newspaper column for it. >> in fact that was one of the things i wanted to accomplish, is i knew from working on other projects, that the impeachment of andrew johnson people are still writing about 100 years later and some of the best accounts were written by people who lived through it. i wanted to write the book, most of the people that you referred to, peter baker wrote primarily about the impeachment and jim stewart, whitewater and there are books about paula jones and the monica lewinsky piece and no once had the whole story and showed how it was interconnected and no one really got access to both sides. that is what i wanted to

document i wanted to be able to talk to both sides. this was something that really as you know, because you lived through it, consumed the country like nothing other than in our life times, perhaps, watergate an nixon's ultimate resignation and disgrace and the assassination of j.f.k. and everyone was fixated on this and had a strong opinion in the country. the country was divided and i wanted to write the definitive neutral account people would look at 100 years from now and say this person got it right. it is interesting to me you mentioned the various stories and parts and narratives and i mean this as a compliment. the book schemes to be structured really as easy to read. very much like an international spy thriller. we start off, with the impeachment. and the ballooning impeachment and go back to the beginning of watergate, and, in the we start... >> whitewater. >> i'm sorry and if i mistake it throughout the conversation,

please correct me. i mean whitewater and the narratives are woven together so they are never completed until the final days of your book. was this intentional? was there a readability quality to this. >> sure. i set out -- i'll tell you this little story and i haven't told anyone else, but i actually had sitting on my desk when i started -- and this is before this had become repopularized, a copy of truman capote's "in cold blood" and i wanted to take -- this story you could not have made up, greg, this was so crazy, all of the pieces of it, in your -- with your wildest imagination, if you were writing fiction you could not have made this story up. so i wanted to capture it in a way that was readable for a completely broad audience. but i wanted to get it right. and, so, when -- early on in the process, i remember having a

little talk with george stephanopoulos as i was getting started, in a informal chat and he said if anyone can get all of these pieces and show how they are connected -- which no once had done before, everyone treated them as separate -- you would have something. and that is what i tried to do. >> let's begin with this. because the characters, particularly in arkansas, that predate clinton's arrival in washington, d.c., are absolutely fascinating and you spend a good deal of time explaining this context that sets the stage for what is happening in washington, later on. and, the story of jim mcdougall is really extraordinary. why did he play such an important role in this? >> without jim mcdougall you didn't have any of the rest of the scandals getting any traction. and, it was also -- arkansas as you know was always in the background of all of this stuff. i spent a lot of time in arkansas, to try to get this

story right. by dad was from kentucky, so i loved being in arkansas. it was like seeing all of my aunts and uncles and spending time with folks. but, it is very much a small town sort of place and until you wrap yourself around that you don't understand where it all goes. what ultimately was the problem in my view wasn't that the clintons were involved in criminal wrongdoing with respect to whitewater. i mean, there were lots of issues, was this person telling the truth about reconstructing this fact. but they were tied up with this guy, who end up having extraordinary problems in terms of unorthodox business practices who ended up a pauper and a convicted felon and this was bill clinton's business partner. that was a problem. and, with -- you can't understand the story -- and some people who a trust very much on both sides said you cannot understand this story unless you understand where it starts with

whitewater and they were right. >> there is a magnetism strangely about jim mcdougall that maybe explains why president clinton became a partner. clearly he's a smart man and clearly well read. clearly loving the limelight. what was it about jim mcdougall that attracted the clintons to him, do you think in the early days. >> i tell you -- people don't understand this -- bill clinton was a young aspiring politician, and jim mcdougall was a more established, older guy who worked with senator fulbright from arkansas. so the way susan mcdougall described it, when she first met bill clinton, running then for attorney general he looked up to jim mcdougall because he was known as a great entrepreneur and he was a smart and charming fellow and it turned out he had serious problems. he was, i believe manic

depressive and that is what the psychologist discussed with me but he had serious problems and bottomed out when he started having financial difficulties, and, so it started spiraling downward and he, it turned out was a con artist. there is no question, that jim mcdougall could spin a story in his james -- as james stewart explained to me, the bigger the lie the greater the thrill for him and he could lie at any moment an this was a complicated thing the clintons were tangled up with. >> it was indeed. briefly, tell us the nature of that partnership in the early days. >> well, the whitewater project as you know, came to symbolize this. but it was a real estate investment. i went fishing with joe purrves, and had finish fried in peanut oil, one of the perks of the project -- it was a hairbrained plan and it was on the long side

of the river and not a good location and lost money but it wasn't whitewater that was the problem, as you know. it was the madison guaranty savings and loan and the s and l failures all over the country and jim mcdougall was cooking the books in all sorts of direction. i don't believe the clintons had anything to do with that but they were entangled in it, it came to be. >> you spoke about the psychologist from the prison, richard clarke. with whom you talked about jim mcdougall. mr. clark got to know him during the last years or months of jim mcdougall's life. that story is very unsettling and brand new, i think, nobody ever told the story about jim mcdougall's death. >> i got access to jim mcdougall's psychiatric records and his history in the prison with the permission of his estate, and dr. clarke, a wonderful person, really cared about him and spent a lot of time with him in prison.

and there is no question that, you know, he came to believe that there was some grand conspiracy by the clintons and others to get him in this prison. but, his death was just tragic, and it was -- there were a lot of unexplained circumstances. i do not believe the clintons had anything to do with this and, incidentally, this is during march of 1998, so you know, because you were involved in -- with the clinton white house, they were focused completely on the monica lewinsky matter and were not worrying about jim mcdougall in prison in fort worth, texas. however, did people in the prison, you know, play games with h guy and give him a hard time? he ended up in solitary confinement, dying there, under some fairly unusual circumstances, separated from his medications. there were bodies littered across the road in the story from start to finish. and that is a tragic story. this story should not be allowed to repeat itself, because, jim mcdougall was kind of symbolic

of all of the tragedy that littered the landscape in this story. >> he died on the verge of being considered for parole. >> correct. >> i think you report that he went to his death believing that within a matter of days, he would be released. tell that side of the story. was there truth in his belief or do you think he was misled. >> a lot of people in the prison believed that he was going to be parolled. that was what the psychologists were led to believe. susan mcdougall, when i told her and showed her the notes from dr. clark, he was told after mcdukal's death by a prison official that jim mcdougall was never going to be parolled, she just, you know, almost lost her composure and said that explains it. this is, you know, jim died

because he lost the hope that that was the only thing keeping him alive but there were other factors coming into it. i believe that until those -- that final month everyone expected that jim mcdougall would be parolled. >> let's talk about susan mcdougall, completely different story related to her husband, obviously, jim mcdougall. she played really an interesting role again as back drop to the impeachment and the washington, d.c. story. tell us about her. in relationship with president clinton. >> well, very colorful character. very likable and interesting person. in the book, as you know, and as politico reported first, i report categorically that there was an affair between susan mcdougall and the president, at some point during his governor years. i believe it was brief. i'm not saying i believe this to

be the case. i'm saying it is the case. however, i cannot disclose my sources and i will not disclose my sources. but i also concluded that although the starr operation spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out that piece of things that it was not the missing link that explained everything or really much of anything. would it have been uncomfortable for her to testify about that in the grand jury? yes. was she looking forward to that? no. was that the reason she didn't testify and went to prison instead? i don't believe so at all. at that point, she had seen jim mcdougall turn into what she described as a craven liar, turned into a cooperate operating witness with ken starr and making up these stories to try to save himself from going to prison or get out of prison, and she believed because she didn't have any incriminating evidence against clinton, the clintons, that she would end up

going to jail, no matter what she said and whether that was rational or not is another question. but did she go to jail, because she was hiding the fact of this affair with clinton? i don't believe so. at all. i think she went there because she hated ken starr and his prosecutor more than anything in the world. whether this was justified or not is' different question. but it is a very interesting piece of this story, because susan mcdougall ends up two years this prisin prison as a r this. >> the reason she spent the two years in prison was because... >> contempt for failing to testify in front of that grand jury. >> that raises one of first maybe "what ifs" the period was volatile and you didn't know what would happen the next day or the following day and you go back and i was struck reading

your book how many times the development or outcome could have been changed if something different had happened and that's one of the "what ifs" what if susan mcdougall cooperated with the office of independent counsel. >> i don't know it would have changed anything at all, really, because she would not have testified as to any knowledge of the clintons being involved in anything. and so, at that point, maybe she wouldn't have gone to... i don't see the starr team as being vindictive and we should talk about him. >> we're getting to that. >> i have great respect for him and he wasn't about to put someone prison because he could or wanted to. but with that -- would that have changed anything? no. i think, then, probably they would have turned towards some other pressure point to -- i mean, ultimately, what the office of independent counsel was trying to do was to figure out, was -- who was telling the truth here, was clinton involved

with these madison gaurnty scams, and i think more pressure would have been put on webster hubble to try to get him to talk. >> this is another person from arkansas who gets a good deal of attention. it strikes me as the developments occurred in real time, those of us who were watching them were eager to know what was really going on and i think this is something you achieved and talked to mr. hubble a number of times, obviously and report fully about -- he was prosecutor almost three times, that's right. >> correct. indicted three times. >> indicted three times and served time in jail as well. what do you think about the web-hubble-clinton relationship. >> they were close friends. hillary clinton worked with webb in the rose law firm, vince foster, web hubble and bill kennedy and hillary clinton and it was a shock to the clintons

when it turned out that he was bilking the rose law firm and hillary herself was a victim of that, that was a total shock. to his credit, web hubble is one of these people, i spent a good bit of time with him and he has really come to grips with his mistakes, i think and just acknowledges them. one of the fascinating things about web hubble, though, is, i believe that, you know, the most compelling proof that -- because he kept saying i don't know what these starr people thought i was hiding. whatever it was they were looking for, i don't know but i didn't have it but proof of that, stop and think, greg, because web raised it himself, if he was hiding something, could bill clinton have afforded not to pardon him, if he was hiding something it would be the surest way he was going to blab and there were no bodies buried there, because as web said, he would have certainly told the story when he didn't get pardoned . >> the other arkansas person

that joined the clintons in washington, d.c. was vince foster. >> right. >> and that tragedy, that suicide occurred within the first months of the administration and had a devastating impact on the white house, did it not. >> it did. it was tragic and, you know, i first started working on that because, on the way back from visiting the whitewater site and fishing up there, joe purves who was close with vince, they grew up in hope along with bill clinton, told me about the months leading up to that and had lots of conversations with vince, he was clearly depressed and one of the things i tried to show and i was finally able to get bill kennedy, people did not want to talk about this and bill kennedy came to washington, took, worked alongside vince, in the white house counsel's office next-door, and he was the person who went and identified hess body at the morgue and he told me of that story, and i put it in there, only to show that to

the extent people try to create conspiracy theorys were involved and killed vince and rolled him up in a rug or whatever, it was just so over the top and so inappropriate, because, they had all lost one of their closest friends. this was bill clinton's friend since he was four years old and this was a horrible time and this piece of things i think is just a very sad piece of the story. >> and then, the final arkansas personality, that we talk about in the context of arkansas is paula jones and the paula jones story. whitewater story, they got intermingled. did you talk to paula jones. >> yes, i did. >> and did you learn anything new from her, other than what had been in the newspapers over and over and over again. >> i think i get a feel for what made paula jones tick and she is a likable person.

you know, it is in fact the last piece of it, because what happened is whitewater bubbles back up -- it had been dead in arkansas for years and it bubbles back up and gets connected somehow with the vince foster suicide, someone said people are connecting dots that don't connect, and then, suddenly comes david barack's story talking about trooper gate and a woman named paula and everything comes together and creates this kind of hysteria that propels forward the appointment of the special prosecutor. we don't have ten hours to talk about... but i do, let me say that with respect to paula jones, i spent a lot of time on this piece of the story and there's a lot of material in there and i got access to raw footage of a film shot as part of clinton chronicles, a very anti-clinton movie and in the very early stages, when paula was still trying to get the story to go national which would

have been used pie her lawyer, as exhibit a at trial and would not have been flattering, and not have painted her in a sympathetic position, i believe 95% of her story of what happened in the hotel room, is true, it is the 5% i have a problem with and that is what was her role in these events and one of the key facts em pa sized by president clinton's lawyers and others is at the time she went to the hotel room at the excelsier hotel she was engaged to be married and they got married 7 months later and when this came out that was a big problem for her, because steve jones as a fairly hotheaded fellow as described by others and hated bill clinton and there was definitely a motive to color this story in her favor and that was in fact that trooper danny ferguson, as you know, testified to -- >> the willing volunteer. >> correct and there are so many

pieces but also the other thing that is incredible is her own lawyers, the virginia lawyers, backed out of this case and quit, because she wouldn't settle for the full amount they asked for in the complaint and they thought they had the case settled, in 1997, i believe it was, and, in this remarkable letter i got my hands on the lawyers begged her to settle the case, at most it was worth $50,000 if she got anything at all and there's a lot about the paula jones case. >> another "what if" though... >> right. >> and there was an opportunity to settle the case before the lawsuit was brought. >> that is true, and, for that part i think president clinton deserves -- that was the best decision on his part but i have to tell you that president clinton's lawyers and paula jones's lawyers made clear to me, they believed they had the case settled. this was not something president clip didn't agree to. he did agree to it. they thought was settled and at

the last minute, paula jones, her advisor, susan clark, and her husband, steve jones wanted more than what they asked for, they wanted an apology, more money or whatever it was and it was scuttled and judge susan weber wright was not happy with that as well. >> and let's get back to the lawyers and washington, d.c. the officers of independent counsel had been created, the special counsel had been appointed, bob fisk. the statute passed congress. and, the question was, whether there was going to be a replacement for robert fisk and you go into the details of this. quite carefully and, to me, it is extraordinary to see the role that the department of justice played, as well as the panel of judges with david centell involved in that. can you tell us about that event, of substituting ken starr

for bob fisk as the independent counsel. >> yes, clearly, president clinton it was the biggest mistake of his presidency to sign the reauthorization of that independent counsel and that had been, as you know, part of his pledge during the election and campaign that he would sign that. and viewed as a good government law, everyone expected that robert fisk would be reappointed. that is what attorney general janet reno asked for, asked for a three-judge panel and it was a jolting, jarring event when he was replaced because fisk was viewed as right down the middle and he was a republican and it was viewed his investigation was really balanced at that point and he was moving it along quickly and then to have ken starr interjected into this, rock the washington side of things, in terms of democrats,

what i was able to show here which had not been known before was, the -- publicly it has been said the three-judge panel unanimously wanted ken starr and in fact i was able to get papers, in term court papers, and talk to the lone democrat on that panel, judge john butner, from virginia, richmond and he, adamantly, was opposed to the appointment of ken starr for the very reason, that in the previous panels they steered away from anyone linked to the washington beltway and didn't want anybody who would have any connections to the political establishment on either side and ken starr seemed very much connected to the republican elite, you know, establishment in this town. and so, he was adamantly opposed to the appointment of ken starr, and, throughout the whole time, in fact, i found a memo in his file indicating he wanted to pull the plug on the independent

counsel operation during the impeachment proceedings, or shortly thereafter, under the theory that his work was now complete. >> had the panel known about ken starr's peripheral involvement in republican activities in the past, even the paula jones case? >> well, the latter, probably, no. certainly, i don't think ken starr was hide anything, and, it was well-known that he was involved in... he had considered a run for the senate, in virginia. he was actively involved in -- he was very close friends with robert bork, an icon of the conservative republican elite, in washington and the paula jones stuff was a sore spot, because, in later, butsner said he was not apprised of the fact that ken starr had appeared on television and had taken a

position the president could be sued civilly, a strong position and, it turns out, was prepared to write briefs for the supreme court case if it got to that or the appellate courts, again, i don't think ken starr was hiding that, and his view was, this was -- anyone could have found it. but it wasn't brought up, and, don't forget, the whole point of an independent counsel, greg, was to have someone who was beyond reproach and beyond suspicion of having any dog in the fight, and, that was troublesome, to judge butsner and he had notes scribbled on his pad of paper ever indicating he was extremely upset about that. >> that was generally unknown, the judge's reservations about this. >> right. >> should that have been disclosed to the public at the time? >> well, he, himself, chose not to disclose it. he ended up signing onto the court's decision and -- to make it a unanimous decision, and acting as a judge should, in the sense that he wanted to make

this above politics and didn't want to create the impression here's the democrat who is against this and here are the republicans who are in favor of it, he tried to do it to protect the court, and i can understand that. you can understand that. >> we have to go to a break. we'll be right back en just a minute. >> excellent. >> i appreciate it. >> thank you.

>> welcome back. you spent a good deal of time with ken starr in writing this book and one of the things that you did in the early part of the book, was to compare the family life and the origins of bill clinton, and ken starr. talk about how these men that were such adversaries, had men similarities. -- many similarities. >> they did. and, in fact, i think there is more similar about them than dissimilar though i'm not sure either of them would like to acknowledge that. it is so coincidental, in many ways, but, they were born within

a month of each other, and born within a couple of hundred miles of each other. i mean, bill clinton was from the lower part there, southern part of arkansas, and ken starr was from texas, nearby, and, they grew up in many ways, well, obviously grew up at the same time but in many ways, with similar up bringings, very religious, but, slightly different and so they take these paths, each coming to the peaks of their careers at this moment, ken starr having been solicitor general of the u.s., federal judge, bill clinton becoming president of the u.s. and i like them both. i have to tell you. and i do want to say this: both of them deserve a the lot of credit here. because, you know, when i went to ken starr, he was the first person i went to, i decided to write the book, because i figured i had written things that could have been viewed as pro clinton during the impeachment and i didn't think

it was an impeachable offense and concluded if ken starr was not interested in talking i didn't want to write the book because i wanted to have both sides and i wanted it to be balanced. ken starr knew what i had written, knew, you know, about my back frowned, but cooperated fully, he gave me access to personal papers, which i tried to weave in there, letters to his kids, that i think shows the human side, very much, he's a wonderful person, a very thoughtful person, bill clinton knew that i had spent time, a lot of time with ken starr and i made it very clear in talking to him and his lawyer, your former partner, david kendall, who i have great respect for, that this was not going to be a ken starr bashing book, that i was not going to be portraying him as a person with horns coming out of his head, because that is not what i believe and so, both of them, went into the project, knowing that that is how i was going to tackle it, and i think both of them understood that there was a value in having

someone write a, you know, objective, historical account of all of this. but they were similar in many ways, and, both were -- and bill clinton, again, the public persona doesn't always capture this, very thoughtful, considerate person. i saw that over and over again. talking to people who grew up with him and i went to the nursing home with his mother -- one of his mother's best friends, margin mitchell and visited margin's mother who is 90-something years old in the nursing home and she told me about, she would get a call from bill clinton on her birthday, every year. and, he'd say, look, do you see mimi, i'm wearing the coat you gave me and he'd be in egypt or, wherever he was, i can barely remember my own kids' birthdays, but this was a common theme and there was nothing fake about that at all. and, an extremely considerate, thoughtful person, you almost -- he is so convincing because he

is speaking from the soul in many ways and ken starr, is also a gentleman. and you don't get to be solicitor general of the u.s., by just being some rabid zealot of any kind and he wasn't, i don't believe. a really kind person and i brought him to duquesne university in 2000 when i first started working on this book and all of my democratic friends were saying, what are you doing, bringing ken starr, what is wrong with you and they came and saw him and they say, boy, he's really impressive. so, this is what i tried to do, is judge people on my own and tried to talk to everyone myself, not using these one dimensional caricatures that the media often creates. >> why do you think he took on the task? >> i don't know. you know, that is a great question. well, i'll tell you, in his mind, ken said that he was called to serve. and i believe that. i mean, he was implored to do this, just as when he was implored to be solicitor general and give up his seat in the u.s.

court of appeals and told me he went back into his chambers and wept like a baby... >> he loved being' judge. >> he didn't want to do this. and i believe that on one hand and i still have a problem with the fact that ken, like many of the republican intelligentsia at the time, thought that the independent counsel was a disaster, a monstrosity and i still don't understand why he took the job and devoted all of his talents an energy to this when he didn't even believe in it in the first place. i think that was a recipe for not a good result. >> and at the time there wasn't a consensus that fisk was doing a bad job. i mean, he was a widely respected person. so, the question remains, why do you think ken starr took on that task? >> well, at the time, you have to remember, if you go back, there was a portion of the republican party that was

incensed at robert fisk, thought he was doing a white-wash job and had already written a report that vince foster had been murdered. -- i'm sorry. committed suicide. not been murdered. that is what was portrayed in some books and media, a counts. and, so, there was a lot of pressure on the three-judge panel and others, to switch at that time. >> from that part of the republican party. >> yes. that's correct. >> from look at it from the outside, one might be forgiven if the perception were given, not only the three-judge panel, but, judge starr were responding to the pressures from an extreme element of the republican party. >> again, i think, don't forget, ken starr had done the investigation with the patwood diaries matter and he saw a moment of crisis here, people wanted a change, there was an un-- >> all pre-monica lewinsky. >> way before monica lewinsky. and i think that he just decided

that this was the right thing to do, even though i can tell you, i interviewed his wife, alice, a lovely person... >> wonderful person. >> and her view was, why would you do this, ken? and i think he really felt called to do this. i think it was one of the -- his most significant mistakes he made in his career, to take this on. >> the interesting thing, because you really cover his life during his period as independent counsel, in great detail. the interesting thing is that this was not fun for him. this was something he did not enjoy. he obviously, neither did the president. but, ken starr was in agony for much of this time as well and did you ask him if he regretted taking this job. >> well, i did in a number of different ways. and, of course, ken being ken, just said, well, he still would have done it because he was called to do this. and he doesn't look back over

his shoulder. he did, i had a number of conversations with him where i told him my view that i thought it was the biggest mistake, was expanding into the monica lewinsky matter. i think he was the last person in the world who should have hand that, because rightly or wrongly, a large segment of the population at that point viewed him as partisan. whether that was true or false he shouldn't have done it as an independent counsel. and he has come to acknowledge that that was not a good decision. i'm not sure for the same reasons exactly but i think if he had to do over again he'd definitely have ended with whitewater and i think he did a pretty credible -- credible job, as special prosecutor though it took too long and would have stayed far, far away from the monica lewinsky matter and left it for someone else. >> final question. does he, looking back at his career as an independent

counsel, recognize where he made mistakes or his office made mistakes, put aside the question of taking on the monica lewinsky matter. whether he was too slow in coming up with the results of the wyatt water investigation and whether he shunts have testified in front of the judiciary committee. to what extent has ken starr looked back and said these were mistakes and i could have done better or the office should have gone another way? >> well, i'd have to go back through and see if there are little specific examples. i think in general, ken's view is that his office did the best it could, with an impossible situation. i think that is the fairest way to sum it up. so i think that he would not agree that his office made terrible mistakes. i think, even with the starr report which is something you are very familiar with because you worked with the clinton white house then that arrived on the scene, i think ken felt that there was really no way to avoid putting all of the detail into

this thing and, as you know, it may have been the single event that galvanized the clinton forces to defend the president at that point because it was so over the top in their view. >> let's talk about monica lewinsky. >> okay. >> the cast of characters that monica lewinsky introduced into the story that you write. you had a chance to talk to her. what does she think about the experience in her life? does she regret that -- anything that she did? does she look at this as a positive experience? how does she look back at this moment in her life? >> i don't see how anyone could look at this as a positive experience, greg and i have come to have a great deal of sympathy with -- for monica lewinsky and her family. i have to say i went into this not knowing what i would think about her, not knowing what i would think about paula jones. monica is a very, very smart

person. one of the most difficult interviews in many ways, because she knows exactly what she'll talk about and what she won't talk about. i spent a good bit of time with her, i sat on folding chairs in a storage room in grenwich village going through documents with her when i finally convinced her that i should see some of the documents from this thing, to help me tell the story. it was clearly a very painful day for her. this was not a joke in any way for monica lewinsky's family. it was the worst experience in their lives, there is no way to undo it. but, i'll tell you this. what i really came to respect. she's one of the few people in this whole saga who just openly acknowledged that she made mistakes about things. didn't try to justify rationalize that in any way. but, nonetheless, when you stop and think about it, often people

will say, if you are having an affair with a married man, who you know also happens to be the president of the united states, you have to assume this sort of thing is going to happen and she wanted the attention or whatever. well, my answer to that is if you have this kind of a relationship you certainly know if things go wrong your picture may appear on the cover of a tabloid magazine in the supermarket. you do not expect that you will be cornered by fbi agents, and federal prosecutors, and told you might go to jail, and that your family is in jeopardy, you would never imagine that in a million years. this was a nightmare for the family. it is a very sad part of the story. and, i think she gets a lot of credit for behaving admirably in this thing because it was a terrible experience. >> one of the moments in the investigation that you focus on is the moment that the fbi and

the lawyers from the office of independent counsel confront her with the possibility that she has filed a false affidavit and misrepresented the truth about her relationship with the president, in connection with the paula jones case. and the details of that and at story of that particular narrative and that incident you, i think -- i think you told the story. you got it there. and, obviously the independent counsel, people spent time with you on this as did ms. lewinsky and her parents. what was the significance of that event, that moment, in the ritz carlton hotel -- you call it the bracing of monica lewinsky. tell us what the significance of that event was. >> it turns out the -- it is very significant, because you know, this is the part where the whole thing comes together. one of the great ironies in this story, greg, is that on one hand, monica lewinsky was the

office of independent counsel's star witness. they needed her. they had to take the position that everything she said was the truth. except for one thing. and that was their treatment of her when they first confronted her in the ritz-carlton. on that front, they ironically had to argue she was not telling the truth and in fact she wasn't allowed to talk about that during the whole time. in the end, as you know, from later on in the book, i disclosed that there was an internal investigation by the justice department -- >> joanne harris. >> joanne harris appointed by ken starr's successor, robert ray to conduct an investigation of the allegations against ken starr's office, about a host of things, and the one piece of it, where joanne harris concluded there were problems, handling the brace of monica lewinsky, brace meaning confronting and

that was, first of all, there was no real planning and the prosecutors told me they thought my evely -- this happened very quickly and they went in there thinking they'd be there for 15 minutes talking to monica and she agreed to cooperate, or whatever, and they didn't have a plan of what happened when the young woman did not want to cooperate, and, not only that, asked to talk to her lawyer friend carter who had written the affidavit and as joanne harris told me, she would have gone nowhere near this once monica started asking for her lawyer. this was not one of the high points of the ken starr operation. and it has been buried all of this time and joanne harris's feeling is, look, everything else came out about the story and it doesn't seem appropriate to hide the one piece of evidence and facts that do not necessarily paint the starr operation in a favorable light. >> now, before she wrote the report she interviewed all of the participants.

>> correct. >> on the office of independent counsel. >> every one of them, fbi agents, everyone. >> has that report been published? is it available to the public. >> it is still under seal. i was not able to get the report. i just got joanne harris's -- as the author told me essentially that was in the report. but, that has been hidden for all of this time and it was placed under seal by the court but, under these circumstances, my judgment was, that was important for the public to know, because, lord knows that everything else, raw grand jury testimony and virtually every detail about people's lives was made public here, and i did agree with her that that was something the public deserved to know. >> we have to tell our viewers who joanne harris is, so we get a sense of who she is. >> joanne harris is a very prominent lawyer, now law professor, had been the head of the criminal division in the clinton administration, under janet reno, and, was picked

because she was viewed as neutral, unbiased and a very, very thorough person. >> let me say, as a lawyer, looking in, it is a little surprising that the prosecutors, when they were organizing and thinking through what they were going to try to achieve with monica lewinsky in the ritz carlton hotel, had not developed a strategy sufficient to deal with the question of immunity, to really think through the various scenarios that might come out of that. were you surprised at that? >> well, don't forget, greg, this was happening so rapidly, it goes to the question, should they have gotten involved in this in the first place? >> at all. >> should they have wired linda tripp after going to her house and hearing that she was going to meet with monica lewinsky and in 24 hours, wiring her without first getting permission from the attorney general or the three-judge panel, so it all goes to the fact that, at this point, this is where i feel the office of independent counsel

kind of lost its, you know, composure as prosecutors, and, wanted to, as jackie bennett told me, get ahead of the curve because they thought they were being stonewalled by the clinton white house. well, it's not your job to get ahead of the curve when it comes to something like this, and, it led to problems, i believe, because it had not been thought through correctly. >> one of the facts that was in dispute about what occurred, in the ritz-carlton was whether or not the off of independent counsel asked monica lewinsky to wear a wire and go into the oval office. >> right. >> did you bring clarity to that question? and what do you think happened on that issue. >> well, i think they clearly talked about her wearing a wire to record conversations, as to who, i'm not sure. i don't know that they were talking about going into the white house to talk to bill clinton, necessarily. maybe to benny curry, certainly, maybe to vernon jordan. but it is very clear, at one

point, jackie bennett called over to make sure they had the equipment ready, in the office, if she was going to wear a wire. so they were talking about that, both she and her mother were adamant about this. as to the specifics, did they really think she was going to go into the oval office and talk to bill clinton, i'm not sure that that was what they had in mind. >> and then, the request came to the centell panel to expand the assignment, mandate of the office of independent counsel and before they went to the panel they went to the department of justice, and talked to the attorney general and the deputy as to whether or not they were supportive and the doj supported the expansion of the mandate. do they have any regrets about that? you talked to the attorney general and eric holder, now the attorney general. did they regret supporting, giving the office of independent counsel this additional assignment? >> well, they did. i interviewed janet reno at her

home in florida, and as you know she's a very -- thinks carefully before she answers and her answers are very short. but she said i would have done things differently. but, i think they felt hemed in and we had the presence of mike iz cough from "newsweek," who called the office of independent counsel and said he'd have to contact vernon jordan and monica lewinsky to confirm the story and he had the information, they felt pressured they had to act quickly and there were a lot of events and, incidentally, i think that this is what journalists do, there wasn't anything wrong about putting pressure. the question was, should the justice department have dictated its behavior by what a journalist was or was not going to publish. i think that was a mistake but oath eric holder and janet reno clearly felt troubled and clearly felt if they had more facts, particularly, about some of the involvement with the

paula jones lawyers they may have easily appointed someone else. but, would they have appointed a special prosecutor, yes, which is an interesting part of the story, because, just because you get rid of ken starr doesn't mean the locomotive is still not coming down the track at president clinton, and that locomotive was the paula jones d desition. >> and the speed with which it occurred was also a component in what happened. >> yes. >> and you talk about this with the media. the constant theme in your book, how important the media's role was, in the development of the history of this. and the decision making was influenced by the media. and, of course mike isacoff played an important role in that because he threatened to publish at any moment and he held off publishing a little bit and one question i have is, what if he went ahead and published what he knew? according to the timeline that he had laid out for himself...

would that have made a difference? >> that was one of question i asked. or if the justice department had just said, we don't care what he does, o'we are going to take or time and do this, yeah, that is the really interesting question, you see and i raise it in the book because i talked to a lot of judges and prosecutors and the prosecutor's job is not to encourage people to lie. and if that had happened, it's quite possible that president clinton would have gone into the deposition and figured out how to tell the truth because he knew what was about to hit him over the head. so it could have changed things considerably, yes. >> and then you do describe in great detail the president's deposition, in the paula jones case. which, by the way, i may say was played at the impeachment trial, at least the first 8 or 9 minutes with the description of the definition of sexual relations. another key moment in addition to the paula jones deposition was the president's appearance

before the grand jury and his testimony there. and, that was where some really great lawyering from david kendall occurred. can you describe what happened there? and how david kendall's presence on the scene made such an important difference. >> first of all, the whole grand jury event was set up in a way that greatly favored president clinton with him just filling the camera and the -- ken starr's prosecutors being muted voices in the background. but also they had president clinton read a little statement where he admitted generally to some wrongdoing and then, didn't get into any details and so, in fact, in many ways, the grand jury testimony cleaned up many of the problems that had been created in the paula jones case, that having been said, there are still, i have read that whole thing, i have watched it many times and there are some things that are false in there and you can debate about whether it was intentionally false or whether it was shading, and, monica

herself, as you know, from some of these stories, concluded there was no way around, you know, some of these things, being false, but for the most part president clinton did a masterful job and starr's office knew it and they walked out of that thing totally depressed, like trying to nail jello to the wall but the president dominated, i think and his big mistake was going on television that night and chewing out ken starr. he was on top of the game before that. >> and you know the vote in the senate, was 55 for acquittal and 45 for conviction. >> yes, that is correct. >> two things, quickly, if we can talk about... one was how close hillary clinton came to beingdrafting and the discussion of the indictment and the secret service versus the fbi and these are two themes you develop and describe en great detail and i don't think it has been discussed the way you have in

your book and they are extraordinary stories. talk about the indictment -- suggested indictment, proposed indictment of the first lady. >> no one has ever seen this indictment to my knowledge, except myself and i not my hands on it, somewhere where it shouldn't have been and that is what is great about doing projects like this and i know president and mrs. clinton have not seen that yet. it was going to be an indictment of the first lady, and webster hubble and was going to relate to all of the early whitewater stuff. it was being mainly sponsored by hickman ewing, in charge of the arkansas phase of things who believed, honestly, that mrs. clinton lied in her answers to some of these things, that is what most of it had to do with, lying in some of the answers, not the conduct itself, was less significant. but he -- >> he was talked out of it by members of the office of independent counsel. >> as he told me monica saved hillary, the office of

independent counsel at this point was so focused and thought the president was in their sights they thought it would be a distraction and, to be fair about it, the assessment was at this point, the chances of actually convicting even if they indicted, were very, very low. and so, they chose not to do it. but that was going on right at the time that they were pursuing the president on the monica lewinsky charges. >> and the issue of the secret service, the office of independent counsel and the fbi were summoning secret service agents to testify against the president. and the secret service institutionally resented and resisted that. and you tell that story, it devolved into where fbi agents were accusing the director of the secret service of participating in the conspiracy to cover up. it is shocking. >> i spent a lot of time on this in the book s as you know, an the head of the secret service, who happened to be from pittsburgh, originally, decided

to break his silence and to talk to me and it was remarkable. he did believe and, you know, really most of his story, i checked out as carefully as i do, it was remarkable. he believed the fbi was pretty much trying to set him up, to get him to agree that he was somehow facilitating liaisons with the president and young women in the white house. >> feeding him falls information and hoping he could find out the false information -- >> having to do with the blue dress and telling him there was no dna on the dress. it was a remarkable piece of the story. >> finally a lot of people after the president was acquitted in the impeachment case said, well, at least the system works. if you look at the entire story, and the role the institutions of government played, do you think the system worked at the end of the day. >> is the system worked in this case? well, the system worked in the sense that the american public put a stop to this, finally. it was the pressure of the american people that said enough. we have had enough.

and this trial has to come to an end. but i think that both sides in this -- and here i'm not talking about ken starr personally and president clinton personally, but both sides got to the point that they really lost their heads and were ready to win at all costs. there was not restraint. and, this i think is what produced the just collision that occurred here. that was not good for the country. and my hope in writing this and one reason i spent so much time trying to get it right, greg, is that really, i do think we have to learn from this, that we can never, ever let us get to -- let ourselves get to this point again in the country. it was a devastating event when so many other things were neglected and so many things were happening, with we know how terrorists starting to think about attacks on the u.s., and, this is what we were focused on. >> right. one last question. henry hyde the chairman of the judiciary committee, probably as responsible as any single

individual for the impeachment of william j. clinton, was defeated in the trial in the senate, but when you talked to him he took pride in one fact and let me ask you this question, my last question for this interview. he said, quote, george w. bush would not have been elected, if we had not impeached president clinton. that is an extraordinary statement. because obviously, the election of george bush against gore in the year 2000 was a turning point in the history of the country. do you agree with that? what was the basis for him to make that argument. >> well, i do, for different reasons than him, i think and henry hyde was, you know, a likable fellow, absolutely. but i do think that by the time we got to the election, people were so exhausted that they just had enough of this a i wt to say one of the people as you know in the book who comes out very well is al gore. he doesn't get credit for this but when he stood up for